of Rephaiah, etc., follow the names of the grandsons of Zerubbabel without a conjunction, and in which the words שׁכניה וּבני, and a statement of the names of one of these בּנים and his further descendants, follow the immediately preceding שׁכניה בּני, has no meaning, and is clearly corrupt, as has been recognised by Heidegger, Vitringa, Carpzov, and others. Owing, however, to want of information from other sources regarding these families and their connection with the descendants of Zerubbabel, we have no means whatever of restoring the original text. The sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, etc., were, it may be supposed, branches of the family of David, whose descent or connection with Zerubbabel is for us unascertainable. The list from רפיה בּני, 1Ch 3:21, to the end of the chapter, is a genealogical fragment, which has perhaps come into the text of the Chronicle at a later time.[1]
Many of the names which this fragment contains are met with singly in genealogies of other tribes, but nowhere in a connection from which we might drawn conclusions as to the origin of the families here enumerated, and the age in which they lived. Bertheau, indeed, thinks “we may in any case hold Hattush, 1Ch 3:22, for the descendant of David of the same name mentioned in Ezr 8:2, who lived at the time of Ezra;” but he has apparently forgotten that, according to his interpretation of our verse, Hattush would be a great-grandson of Zerubbabel, who, even if he were then born, could not possibly have been a man and the head of a family at the time of his supposed return from Babylon with Ezra, seventy-eight years after the return of his great-grandfather to Palestine. Other men too, even priests, have borne the name Hattush; cf. Neh 3:10; Neh 10:5; Neh 12:2. There returned, moreover, from Babylon with Ezra sons of Shecaniah (Ezr 8:3), who may as justly be identified with the sons of Shecaniah mentioned in 1Ch 3:22 of our chapter as forefathers or ancestors of Hattush, as the Hattush here is identified with the Hattush of Ezr 8:2. But from the fact that, in the genealogy of Jesus, Matt 1, not a single one of the names of
- ↑ Yet at a very early time, for the lxx had before them our present text, and sought to make sense of it by expressing the four times recurring בּני, 1Ch 3:21, by the singular בּנו in every case, as follows: καὶ Ἰεσίας υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, Ῥαφὰλ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, Ὀρνὰ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, etc.; according to which, between Hananiah and Shecaniah seven consecutive generations would be enumerated, and Zerubbabel's family traced down through eleven generations. So also Vulg. and Syr.
